A Quarter of Likely Visitors to Cultural Organizations Are In One Age Bracket (DATA)

Share This

Which generation has the greatest percentage of folks who profile as likely visitors to cultural organizations? That’s the focus of this week’s Know Your Own Bone Fast Facts video. The answer might surprise you.

…Or, maybe the answer WON’T surprise you, given all the recent talk about the importance of engaging millennials for visitor-serving organizations such as museums, zoos, aquariums, science centers, performing arts entities, and even national and state parks. Certainly, a subset of millennials cannot possibly take the cake as having the most people who are likely visitors! Au contraire. As it turns out, we millennials really do our best to be ever worthy of attention.

A high-propensity visitor is a person who has the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that indicate an increased likelihood to visit a cultural organization. In other words, these are the people who are most likely to actually walk through our doors. It’s may be challenging for some of us to believe, but not everybody who hears the word “history museum” or “ballet” thinks, “Yes! Let’s go!” (or even a less enthusiastic variation of this statement). However, there are folks who are more likely to think this way, and these people are our high-propensity visitors. They are the people who are most likely to visit cultural organizations.

Remember: High-propensity visitors are not the same as historic visitors. People who profile as historic visitors are those with the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes that match those who traditionally visit cultural organizations. Simply, all historic visitors (traditional, actual visitors) are generally included in the high-propensity visitor group (potential visitors), but not all high-propensity visitors profile as historic visitors. To be overly glib, not all likely visitors to cultural organizations are wealthy and white. (Again, that’s an extreme over-simplification, but my hope is that it gives you a sense of the distinction.) In fact, it’s quite the opposite…

Historic visitors – people who look and act like the people that cultural organizations have had success engaging in the past – are exiting the market (e.g. due death, relocation, etc.) at a faster rate than they are being replaced (e.g. via birth, immigration, etc). This phenomenon is called negative substitution. If organizations do not do a better job of engaging emerging audiences with an interest in visiting, it will continue to be a challenge for visitation to keep pace with population growth. We need to get better at engaging new audiences.

In the chart below, the red bar on the left shows the percentage of the US adult market by age cohort as per the US Census Bureau. The blue bar on the right indicates the percentage of adult high-propensity visitors to visitor-serving organizations (VSOs) as informed by the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study.

This chart is segmented by age rather than by more broad generational cohorts, and that allows us to dig deeper and better understand the particular dynamics of each age group.

Almost a quarter (24.3%) of adult high-propensity visitors in the US were millennials between the ages of 25-34 in year 2016. That is so much millennial potential! And it’s not surprising, really, as I’ve written a great deal about the cultural industry’s millennial engagement opportunity before.

The fact that the greatest percentage of potential visitors falls into a millennial age cohort is a big deal because cultural organizations are not adequately securing millennial visitation. In fact, it’s a bit more of a unique and attention-worthy situation than that…

Simply put, data suggest that millennials are both the most frequent visitors to cultural organizations and also comprise their greatest percentage of overall attendance potential. At the same time, millennials are also the most under-represented generational cohort in terms of visitation. There are simply so many of us that we’re both the cultural industry’s most frequent current visitors that need to be kept happy – and ALSO the generation that organizations must do a better job of attracting. Here’s the data on millennial visitation and the extent to which millennials make up our greatest volume of visitation and yet still are not visiting at representative rates.

Moreover, data suggest that there are other “millennial characteristics” that make this age group a critical target audience for cultural organizations.

Before opening this article, you may have already been thinking something like, “Jeez! It feels like we are slaves to the millennial generation!” I think that sentiment makes sense. We talk about millennials a lot. (Even I get a bit tired of talking about us and I’m a millennial!) Here are some important things to remember if you’re getting fed up with millennial talk. Most importantly, “millennial talk” is code for “everybody talk.” Perhaps as a result of living in our super-connected world, other age groups increasingly share “millennial characteristics.” Think about it: Millennials are far from the only generation that utilizes the web and values brand transparency and personalization.

Adding all of these factors up might make a non-millennial groan, but it doesn’t make them less important: (1) Millennials are already the most frequent attendees to cultural organizations; (2) They are our most under-served age cohort (as they are not visiting at representative population rates); (3) They are sort of a canary in the coalmine for engagement of all audiences today; and (4) Millennials comprise the highest percentage of high-propensity visitors to cultural organizations.